Campus News

Buffalo Partnership Project changing lives of refugee students

By CHARLES ANZALONE

“What we’re trying to do is reverse the narrative about Lafayette High School.”

Fenice Boyd, principal investigator

Buffalo Partnership Project: A Common Core Collaborative

Buffalo Public School social studies teacher Lisa Spaulding has
heard the background stories of the refugee students at Lafayette
High School, particularly the ones told by the girls.
“Absolutely hair-raising,” Spaulding says.
“Frightening. All absolutely heart-breaking.”

And that’s why the work she has done with faculty and
doctoral students in UB’s Graduate School of Education means
so much. Spaulding teaches at a school designated for refugees
emigrating to Buffalo because of what most commonly are traumatic,
life-threatening circumstances.

Seventy percent of all students at Lafayette High School speak
English as a second language. The students there speak 40 different
languages. Spaulding often hears the stories behind the faces of
her 110 refugee students. They demonstrate the adversity these
children faced and the unmistakable progress they have made since
arriving in the U.S.

These students are undeniable proof the Buffalo Partnership
Project: A Common Core Collaborative (BPP Collaborative) has made a
difference.

Using technology such as iPads funded through the BPP, the
students and their teachers are able to share their stories and
their learning experiences.

“These technological tools are wonderful supports for
English-language learners, and we’re excited to see teachers
using them to impact student learning for the better,” says
Fenice Boyd, principal investigator of the BPP Collaborative and
associate professor of literacy at UB. Boyd and BPP team members
shared some compelling examples of how students have used these
tools to tell their stories:

A 16-year-old girl from Eritrea recorded a story that described
hiding under a burlap bag as she and her mother rode a camel on
their way to safety in the Sudan. When soldiers approached, her
mother hunched over her daughter under the burlap holding her mouth
shut. If the soldiers caught them, they easily could have been
killed.

Another girl who came to the U.S. from Burma struggled all year
with hepatitis. This health concern has affected her learning, and
she has had great difficulty reading and writing. But the girl took
to an app that was part of a suite of tools identified and provided
by the BPP Collaborative, and has showed the ability to pronounce
and recognize words like “guerilla warfare” and
“defoliant.” “She pronounced it correctly,”
says Spaulding. “It’s something she can do. She’s
good at it and it’s inspired her to be in school more
frequently. If she wasn’t feeling well, she might have stayed
home. This project has really drawn her in.”

Last March, teachers worried about an 18-year-old Burmese boy
who could only recognize a few capital letters, four lower-case
letters and no vowels. Now after working on an iPad, he’s
been able to identify two important historical figures from World
War II. “He has even started to pronounce the names,”
says Spaulding. “That’s huge.”

These three Lafayette students are only a few examples of the
success of the BPP Collaborative. The collaborative project, which
began as a discussion among faculty in the UB Department of
Learning and Instruction, has ended up impacting classrooms in one
of the most challenging educational environments in the Buffalo
Public Schools.

“What these folks have been doing is just terrific, such a
positive Buffalo story,” says Mary McVee, director of
UB’s Center for Literacy and Reading Instruction. “If
anyone is looking for an education project that is having an
observable impact on students’ learning, this project is
it.”

Lafayette High School, on the city’s West Side, is a
drama-filled example of how education can play a crucial role in
filling gaping needs of young people. In 2008, the district
designated Lafayette as a school to serve the needs of immigrant
and refugee students. Six years later, in what many see as a
self-fulfilling prophecy, the state Department of Education
declared it a “failing” school.

Thirty percent of Lafayette students are classified as SIFE, or
Students with Interrupted Formal Education. That means these young
people have endured an interruption of four years or more in their
structured education, often because their families were in refugee
camps or other life-threatening situations that caused major
disruptions in the learning environments that most Western New York
families take for granted.

This past summer, the district almost closed the school, an
event that received extensive media coverage. So the BPP
Collaborative set out to change that negative perception, and in
more than a small way. With one emphasis on using technology in
meaningful, relevant methods, teachers and the BPP project staff
set their sights on changing the culture and showing these
high-needs students they can make progress.

“What we’re trying to do is reverse the narrative
about Lafayette High School,” says Boyd. “It’s
been identified as a ‘failing school’ and known for its
low-test scores. There are a lot of good things going on there.
There are a lot of hard-working students and hard-working teachers
who are committed and dedicated.”

The public will get its chance to learn about the BPP
Collaborative and meet the students and educators making it work at
the “Voices of Lafayette High School’s Community”
iPad expo from 1-3 p.m. June 7 in the Walden Galleria. Faculty and
students will showcase the work being done by students and teachers
in the corridor outside the Apple Store on the lower level of the
mall.

“The teachers I work with are passionate about teaching
and learning and meeting the particular challenges of working with
English language learners in an urban setting.” says Jennifer
Reichenberg, a UB doctoral student in reading education who serves
as an instructional coach for the BPP Collaborative.

Reichenberg says the coaching relationship is truly a
“collaboration” and it is a “privilege” to
be part of it. Each BPP member brings a different area of expertise
and the team works together to meet difficult challenges. Each
teacher has particular goals, centered around English language
learners, the Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS), and technology
integration.

“The teachers work hard to help the students to learn
under difficult circumstances,” says Reichenberg. “My
role is to support the teachers in a differentiated manner. My job
is to help them meet those goals through collaboration and
support.”

Along with integrating and applying iPads as tools for teaching
and learning, the BPP project staff works with teachers to
integrate the Common Core standards into instruction. And because
Lafayette is such a “diversity rich” school community,
language and culture is stressed as an important aspect of
differentiated instruction.

“We want teachers and kids to use their own voices and
their own words,” says Reichenberg. “We want to teach
them to trust their own knowledge.”

Spaulding, the social studies teacher at Lafayette, says her
training with the BPP Collaborative has reinforced a focus on
instruction in which the students read their work out loud to
themselves and each other.

“Kids need to be speaking to each other,” she says.
“They need to be talking. It’s a different approach
than how we used to teach. And the UB program has taught me
concrete ways to get kids talking.

“Everything we’ve done in class has had a speaking,
writing and listening component,” says Spaulding.
“There is no doubt in my mind: The kids are learning better
and retaining more.”

The BPP project uses a professional development-coaching model
to support the classroom teachers and their students. According to
Boyd, the model centers on a three-tiered approach:

Full-day workshop sessions centered around the Common Core
standards, text complexity, language and culture, and technology as
a tool for instruction and inquiry.

After-school hands-on workshops where teachers work with their
coaches and UB faculty to apply their instructional plans, whether
they are units or lessons.

Coaching cycles that entail pre-planning, observations and
reflections, with the support of an instructional coach.

“The program does not teach me how to teach social
studies,” says Spaulding. “I know that already. It
helps me teach global history to a population that does not
understand English well, or not at all.

“I know how to get my kids talking to each other now. I
didn’t have those tools until I started working with the UB
program.”

Spaulding is unequivocally enthusiastic in her support of her
students and her position as a teacher in Buffalo. Her refreshing
and optimistic attitude comes from a mix of factors, but the
Buffalo Partnership Project is certainly one.

“I’m blessed. I teach all refugees,” Spaulding
says. “I wouldn’t exchange this job for any other in
the city of Buffalo.”